Understanding the nature of pictures. Two-year-old children’s use of photographs as symbolic representations

PERALTA, OLGA A.; SALSA, ANALÍA M.

Atlanta, Georgia, Estados Unidos

Congreso; 2005 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development; 2005

Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

Among other functions, pictures serve as sources of information and as means of communication. The purpose of this research was to compare the understanding of these two symbolic functions by very young children. The results show that 24-month-old-children were able to communicate what they knew about observed situation (the concealing of an object) via a picture: point-picture, but they were not able to use a picture as a source of knowledge about an unseen situation to find a hidden object: search. Transfer effects were also found; once representational insight was gained in the point task 24-month-olds transfer it to the search task. This flexibility in the comprehension of symbols constitutes a crucial step in the route to mature symbolization.